"Just tracking how the ball comes out of my hand and getting that right," said Lowder, who is 14-0 with a sterling 1.77 ERA this season. A few weeks in the lab, and he emerged with one of the best pitches in college baseball. As a freshman, he needed to work on his slider. Lowder has spent hours studying film from Wake's famed pitching lab - a set-up equipped with more than 20 high speed motion capture cameras to examine biomechanics and a 3D Doppler radar system for measuring speed and location - to perfect his craft. The hard data though, that's his bread and butter. Lowder paints during his down time, a chance to explore a creative side that he's fairly sure helps him on the mound, too - even if he can't quite explain how. He's as avid a student of the game as Wake has, and equally as enthusiastic when it comes to sharing his knowledge. Lowder is almost professorial in his approach, said assistant coach Corey Muscara. "Rhett's not as good as he thinks he is," McGraw joked.īut when it comes to chess, yeah, Lowder knows his stuff, and that's fitting for a guy who's taken on the role of wise elder among the pitching staff. This is true, too, of cornhole and ping-pong and pretty much any other competition Lowder tries - at least according to him. There's a chess board in the Wake Forest player's lounge. Their first game in Omaha is against Stanford (2 p.m. ET, Saturday on ESPN). It's that Lowder, Hartle and Sullivan - along with their injured teammate, McGraw - provide the perfect alchemy of smarts, talent and drive to potentially lead the Deacons to their first MCWS title since 1955. They don't compete against the other team, they compete against themselves and against each other." "But those guys just feed off each other, man. ![]() How is that even a thing?" Walter said recently. 1 overall seed entering Super Regionals and the odds-on favorite to win the Men's College World Series. All three earned first-team All-ACC nods, and they now have Wake as the No. McGraw went down with an elbow injury before the season started and hasn't thrown a pitch, but his successor, Sean Sullivan, stepped in without missing a beat. Hartle blossomed into the superstar his pedigree suggested. In the year since, Walter's prophecy hasn't exactly played out as expected, but in some ways, Wake's run has been even more impressive. Still, Walter saw the potential, and he wanted his guys singularly focused on reaching it. Josh Hartle was a big-time prospect coming out of high school, but his freshman season was rocky. Teddy McGraw had finished 2022 strong, but won just five games. The rest of the rotation was more of a work in progress. "They want to win, and they have a little mean streak in them - 'Me against you, and I'm winning.'"Īt the time, Wake had one true ace in junior Rhett Lowder, who'd just won the school's first ACC pitcher of the year award in 2022. The trio already had a group chat going, and competition, well, that comes naturally. He told his guys to start a group chat and find new ways to get better, to challenge themselves every day. "I want you to think of this rotation in that same regard," Walter told them. This staff, Walter said, could be legendary, too. Walter's pitchers were still in diapers back then, but a rotation that good gets remembered. ![]() ![]() Wake Forest coach Tom Walter was chatting with three of his starting pitchers last summer when he offered a history lesson.īack in 2003, Rice won the College World Series largely on the strength of three dominant starting pitchers - Jeff Niemann, Philip Humber and Wade Townsend - who, a year later, would all go on to be selected within the first eight picks of the 2004 Major League Baseball draft. It has been updated with dates ahead of Wake Forest's game with Stanford. Inside Wake Forest baseball and the pitching staff behind its dominance in 2023Įditor's note: This story was originally published on June 9, prior to the start of the Men's College World Series. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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